Are your survival skills honed?

As time flies past us, we're continuing to make great progress. We set a goal of having all paper design completed by the end of October and we’re pretty darn close to that. Last month, we flew in many of the outside writers and designers for a 4-day table read. It was an amazing process and allowed us to really get in sync on the overall flow of the game. Each level had some takeaway notes and modifications, but overall, we are very happy with the progress we've made. You will be happy to hear that we reviewed the vision document again at that meeting, and we are right on course with delivering what we intended.

On Friday of next week (December 14th), we will kick off Ask a Dev Week on our forums. Starting on the following Monday, our team will check out the posts and answer some of the top questions each day. We will have our internal team available and some of the outside writers and designers to answer questions. It couldn't be a better time as we are now comfortable with our attribute and skills list. So without further ado…

Attributes and Skills Breakdown

One of our favorite elements from the original Wasteland was the vast number of skills available to your party. By carefully selecting your skill breakdown for each character, you could create a bad-ass party of Rangers who were able to solve puzzles or challenges in multiple ways. We knew this was going to be a focal point for Wasteland 2. The following is an overview of our current thoughts on the attributes and skills system in Wasteland 2.

First, here is the list of attributes you can expect to find in Wasteland 2. Attributes are the starting values for your character traits. These are established when you create your character and can be different for each member of your party. Attributes are all passive, meaning that they won't be actively used in the world to solve issues.

Strength

Perception

Luck

Intelligence

Charisma

Expertise

Speed

You might immediately spot a few differences between this list and the original Wasteland. Perception has been turned into an attribute. We felt that perception tied into many other skills and played such an important role that it earned its position as an attribute. Also, there is this weird skill called Expertise on the list. Where the hell did that come from? Expertise is essentially agility and dexterity combined together into one package. We have defined it as the level of mastery of motions with your body and hands.

The following is the list of skills that can be used by the various party members.

When we began designing the skills, we started with the systems in Wasteland 1. We immediately removed any skills that we didn't feel were going to be represented well in the level designs. Each skill had to be something that was going to be used throughout the game. All skills that remained would need to be designed into multiple areas to make the cut. This in no way implies that all skills are used equally. Some skills are used in rare circumstances in Wasteland 2 and finding these uses brings an appropriate reward.

Each starting skill has a formula that is derived from up to 3 attributes based on what would be necessary to be proficient in that skill. So initially, where you place your attribute points will determine the starting value of that skill. A character’s skills can be increased by leveling up, using that skill, and through specific items equipped on the character. For example, our current formula for Pick Lock is [10 + (1*Perception) + (2*Expertise)]. Depending on your starting attributes, your initial skill in Pick Lock can vary greatly.

In order to make something happen in the world, you will need to use the proper skill. Wasteland 1 allowed players to use strength and perception. We wanted to keep this functionality so we created skills for these; Brute Force and Examine. In future updates, we will go into more detail on many of these skills.

You will need to make tough decisions on where to spend your precious skill points as you trek through the Wasteland. There is no single "best" strategy as it depends on your play style. Some skills you might want only one character to focus on, while other skills might be better to have on multiple characters. We are committed to making a heavily replayable game so you can be sure that experimentation with different strategies will yield interesting results.

And to close out the update, here is a sweet little portrait to whet your appetite. I'd like to introduce you to one of the Wasteland raiders, a nasty resident of Los Angeles.

Perhaps changing "Doctor" to "Surgery" would be good, as it more clearly separates the different ways that would be used. You only use surgery on an operating table, you only use field medic on, well, the field.

Field Medic is somebody who can quickly (and efficiently), stabilize a injury, stop the bleeding, patch up a bullet hole,split a broken leg; but can't necessary "heal" you back to full health.

A Doctor isn't good at the immediate damage control (nor as resourceful as a Field Medic under fire/out in the field), but has the medicine/tool to fully heal a person back to full health given a few days.

Wow looks amazing. Luck is a great attribute was important in Tunnels&Trolls, MERCENARIES, SPIES & PRIVATE EYES which wasteland was based on. I just hope there is a pen&paper rpg version that follows by Ken St. Andre and/or Michael Stackpole.

Seeing as it's likely that attributes are not usable, I hope Brute Force and Examine are default skills that all characters get (along with other skills that serve as attribute analogs). I'm fine with that.

Not really. The game is a party-based RPG. You don't have one single character, you have four. Just remember if it's like the original it'll probably be a safe thing to have all of them invest in Field Medic.

I have one concern, which I also noted in the forums, and that is that the explanation for Brute Force and Examine seem to indicate that WL2 will not allow players to have characters use attributes to interact with the environment. I think this is bad. You can move a heavy object with sheer strength, you don't need to be trained in a skill to do so. However, you can be trained to identify the correct point of leverage, so a skill like that, which combines Strength and Perception, could be used instead. Conversely, you could use Perception first to lower the to-hit on moving an object with Strength (a 1-2 punch). In order of efficacy, Leverage, Perception then Strength, and finally just Strength.

Regardless, I hope Attributes remain usable rather than as skill bases.

I agree with Samet, this has gone beyond nitpicking to being downright inane. Who cares what it's called?

Oh wait, I can see the reviews now: "Well this game would have been 5/5 but for some reason they have this completely inexplicable and confusing new attribute call 'Expertise.' I just had no idea what it meant and could not be bothered to find out by reading the manual or looking at in-game help. So this game gets a 2/5."

So, many people want a new name for 'expertise,' but then we lose the sweet acronym, SPLICES. What to do? Well, if we change expertise, we lose a crucial vowel for acronym creation, so maybe 'Agility' is the best choice, since it's more agreeable to some as a term and still gives us that tasty vowel. Let's see, using Wordsmith.org's anagram creator with "splicas"... what do we get... ah! Here we go! "Assclip!" Problem solved.

I've always assumed Agility/Dexterity where always one of the same; with a slightly different look. Agility covered more of the macro, while Dexterity covered more of the micro; but still relating to the same subset of precise body/hand coordination.

Tho, I am perplexed what would be a good name that would "combine" them both.

Whatever you name the skills, please let respecialization be available. That's usually one of the first mods I find for RPGs. By the time I fully understand the game, I might realize I spent some points on something I didn't really want, or my poor talent choices are hampering me. I'm not going to waste time starting over. I'll just not play anymore. I don't mind if you make it cost resources (eg the Skyrim mod I have that costs you Dragon Souls to respec) or have a cooldown period...just make it an option.

Yes it seems expertise was mistakenly labeled a skill instead of an attribute. My 2c for expertise: I think it makes perfect sense as both agility and dexterity can be enhanced with practice. The problem being that expertise can refer to anything that can be worked on, including anything intellectual. So it does seem a bit misleading to anyone that didn't catch it here or in the manual.

Coordination doesn't cover agility too well as agility implies a fit, able body while a big oaf can be coordinated.

Able-body or (physical) aptitude could work. Adroitness technically works but sounds awefully French :)

That would be nice to see a "New Game +" or something like letting to import our overpowered rangers and start a new game with them ,n a more challenging mode. "Terror of the Wastes" mode where our first enemy is a Scorpitron.

Thanks for sharing on this update, I like the design choices, very well thought through.

Two points I'd like to add relating to the skills are:
(1) In the first game there were some skills that were not clearly elaborated, and that was quite fun for a fan of the game to guess or conjecture about over the course of the game and several replays
(2) Do consider allowing for a map reset just like in the first game, so that we would be able to eventually create uber characters again with multiple skills : )

I'm also not liking "Expertise" and I think "Coordination" would be a much better replacement for the Dexterity/Agility combination. I'm really liking the Brute Force idea. So... does Backer Skill add to our ability to donate via Kickstarter? ;)

My first thought: Yay! So many dialogue skills instead of just 'speech'.
My second thought: What? 10 weapon skills? That might lead to some character builds specifically aimed at using a particular weapon or a chain of weapons during a game. Like 99,9% energy weapons users in Fallout 3 end up with a gauss rifle in their arms. But while in F3 it's not a problem to take both energy weapons and, say, big guns, it doesn't sound like it could work out in W2..

When I read Expertise I instantly thought "Great, they separated Intelligence from knowledge and called knowledge expertise instead". But then when I read the explanation for expertise it didn't really make sense.

Backer skill is probably a placeholder for whatever skill they came up with for the backers. They probably want to keep it a secret for know. I doubt that the actual skill will be named [Backer skill].

I'm with a number of others in the vote for renaming "Expertise." I know it sounds like nitpicking but it will confuse a lot of people. I think most people will think of "expertise" as describing a level of skill, not an attribute. I know I'll be constantly getting nagged by this in my head while playing the game.

I also immediately thought "Coordination" would be a good name like David Lawson suggests. Since you're using Speed and Strength as names, you're not worried about unique first letters so this would fit well.

I have no problem with Expertise, what concerns me is a lack of an attribute or skill for physical hardiness. You could fudge it with Brute Strength, but I see a huge difference between, for example, bench pressing more than someone and being able to drink them under the table - they should be covered by two different skills/attributes.